“Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which the publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; not yourself. Smug-faced readers, managing editors, and big bosses don’t like the true texts of women – female-sexed texts. That kind scares them.” –Hélène Cixous

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Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) Award. Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She also co-edited the anthology Bettering American Poetry 2015 and is a professor of creative writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.

love that Cixous quote! You made my day. Especially the “not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which the publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs”.

How well that describes publishing and the literary establishment in my Canada.

Interesting…the Cixous quote is from 1976.
In 2009 we are dealing with more hyper-Capitalism than Capitalism,
almost by definition of cash-streams. Take a look at the last 10 years of corporate
history in publishing. Some rather massive and risky leveraging in the face of steady-state or slightly declining business. There are actual scientifically measured
connections w/respect to investment:http://www.livescience.com/culture/080930-testosterone-risk.htmlhttp://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2008/09/financial-risk-taking-tied-testosterone
Now, some level of risk-taking can be proven to be necessary, and some functions
want more of it than others. Too much rask-taking has severe consequences, as
we are all aware now with our junk debt recession.
As mentioned, if I look at actual best-selling names in 2008, women are in the
lead, in spite of obsolete lists. But look at the recent history of a behemoth like
HRH/Riverdeep (Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt,etc)….and the performance of this
risk-money scheme (the CreditSuisse etc holders). Before that, we have
Vivendi’s ventures and losses, and before that…etc. The stridency of the PW list
against actual sales, and the persistence of big-risk money and losses in
the publishing arena suggest to me that maybe (speculative goggles on)
publishing is a particularly appealing target of pride and want. In several “Star
Trek” series, there is a very acquisitive race called the Ferengi.
They forgive a lot in the pursuit of profit, but the ultimate condemnation
is reserved for power wielded in excess, for personal reasons, at the cost
of profits. I wonder if the Ferengi would find recent activities even at odds
with proper Capitalistic modes and motives. Are we looking at Capitalism per se,
or Capitalism that has been ‘mounted’?